Browse: Page 12
By J. Timothy King on August 17, 2012
Frasier evokes strong memories for me. Back in the day, we used to record episodes on VHS. And then I went over to my parents’ and put on Frasier and worked late into the night on their Windows computer—mine ran Linux—practicing designing 3D scenes. My idea was to create a computer game about a haunted school building, but the problem was that I had no idea what the hell I was doing.
Now, I waste time watching Frasier on Netflix, and I drink for all the stupid, idiotic stuff—drink coffee if I want to get wired or wine if I want to get smashed, and this show is rich enough to accomplish either! Continue reading “The “On the Couch with Frasier” Drinking Game”
Posted in Entertainment, Television | Tagged drinking game, Frasier, TV
By J. Timothy King on August 16, 2012
Links and things that I’ve run across recently.
(I think I’m becoming more cynical and sardonic. Sorry about that. Might be time to read more Dave Barry.)
Spider Robots Take Over the Earth
Someone must’ve sent me this link, to a piece about a rideable spider-robot, named Stompy, being designed and built locally.
I couldn’t resist clicking on the link. But imagine how let-down I felt when the article revealed that the robot is, in fact, only a hexapod (like an insect). A spider robot has 8 legs, not 6. Talk about bait-and-switch, eh?
War, Peace, and Paradise
Last month, my friend and fellow artist Lawrence Strauss posted a succinct post on his blog pointing out how important it is to wrestle with one’s world-view. (Includes a Star Trek reference to Gene Roddenberry’s vision.) Continue reading “Bits & Pieces 2012-08-16”
Posted in Bits & Pieces, Politics | Tagged Apple, David Brady, Lawrence Strauss, Michael Dorn, Pinterest, Portraits, Radley Balko, Star Trek, Stompy, Through The Fire
By J. Timothy King on August 14, 2012
George Starling quit his job as a secret agent to take care of a traumatized woman he rescued. He has brought her home to her small Michigan town, where she can’t seem to get better, and he can’t seem to shake loose of his need to take care of her. When an old friend asks him to investigate a local lead in an international kidnapping, George reluctantly agrees to interview a witness.
That witness is Karla Marquette, a flaky local movie buff who seems to have lost touch with reality. But George knows the instant he meets her that Karla has a genius for happiness. If he can only help Karla clear her friends of suspicion in this kidnapping and murder, perhaps she can help he and his girlfriend find the happiness that eludes them. But soon George finds himself, and even his girlfriend, entangled in a deceptive plot, and it may be up to Karla (bum bum buuuuummmm…) to rescue them all!
Today, I’m picking up an ebook from my reading backlist, The Man Who Did Too Much, a “Starling and Marquette” comic murder mystery by Camille LaGuire a.k.a. “The Daring Novelist.”
I don’t remember how I discovered Camille’s blog, from which I discovered some of her short stories, which prompted me to pick up this e-novel. I do remember enjoying her work, especially the characters—and as you know, characters are a really huge deal with me.
Today’s teaser, from location 6258 (or thereabouts, randomly chosen by Random.org) of The Man Who Did Too Much: Continue reading “Teaser Tuesdays: The Man Who Did Too Much, by Camille LaGuire”
Posted in Books, Teaser Tuesdays | Tagged Camille LaGuire, The Man Who Did Too Much
By J. Timothy King on August 13, 2012
The Mars “face” featured in the X-Files episode “Space”
My kids just got back from camp, and while they were gone, I enjoyed myself. (See, all last week, you didn’t even realize, because I hid it so well.)
I watched a whole bunch of Netflix! Including episodes of Star Trek and The Dick Van Dyke Show and Get Smart and Roswell.
On the evening after the Curiosity landing, I celebrated with the X-Files episode “Space,” in which an alien possesses a NASA director in order to sabotage US space exploration (thus explaining certain NASA disasters and embarrassments). In my opinion, those early episodes of The X-Files are truly creepy, suspenseful in a way that I wish I could reproduce (and maybe I will learn to someday). I followed that up with Mythbusters “NASA Moon Landing” myths, all of which are silly but entertaining. More fascinating to me as a character author are the reasons why anyone would be that skeptical that man has stepped foot on the moon. I mean, I’m a sorta skeptical sort myself, but the “moon landing is a hoax” position represents an extreme that I see no logical reason to adopt. Continue reading “This Is Not a Real Blog Post (Ponderings and Plans)”
Posted in About Tim King, Books, Entertainment, Television, Writing | Tagged NetFlix, Writing Forums |
By J. Timothy King on August 10, 2012
No, that’s not peppers stuffed with vegetarians. It’s peppers not-stuffed with meat… or peppers stuffed with not-meat. (One of those.)
Remember the days when I used to write funny pieces on Friday—or at least attempts at humor—rather than copying out of my recipe book? Yeah, those were good times, weren’t they. But I posted a photo of this one up on my personal Facebook profile, and my Facebook friends were so enthralled that now I am compelled to afflict you with yet another recipe involving beans and/or rice.
This one is actually exceedingly simple, and still I managed to screw it up. (So you might want to use a dose of caution and common sense if you try this.) It’s roasted peppers stuffed with spanish rice. I made it up myself! And still, it tastes pretty good. (Imagine that.) For the benefit of my Facebook friends, who want the recipe, I’ll explain to you what I think I ought to have done, and how I screwed it up in real life.
Let’s start with what I should have done. (So be aware that I haven’t actually tried this recipe yet, as written.) Continue reading “Vegetarian Stuffed Peppers (Recipe)”
Posted in Food, Recipes | Tagged green pepper, roasted peppers, spanish rice |
By J. Timothy King on August 9, 2012
Triskelion battle ring, from “The Gamesters of Triskelion”
Links and things that I’ve run across recently.
Return to Triskelion
To ordinary people with dictionaries, a triskelion is an artistic motif consisting of three interlocked spirals. Star Trek fans, however, will recognize “Triskelion” as the planet where the “Providers” (these ultra-powerful, disembodied, colored, light-up brain guys) betted on how fights would turn out between captured alien slaves from around the galaxy. (The ring in which these battles occurred was a triskelion, hence the name of the planet.) The Providers had been capturing and abusing slaves in this way since time immemorial, until they made the mistake of kidnapping James T. Kirk, who beat them at their own game. Unfortunately, as gamblers, they don’t always pay their debts, because they’ve apparently turned back on their words and are now gaming again, with a whole new generation of slaves. Continue reading “Bits & Pieces 2012-08-09”
Posted in Bits & Pieces | Tagged Curiosity, depression, Mat Honan, Star Trek
By J. Timothy King on August 8, 2012
Rory and Lindsay, and their attorneys mothers, have a grown-up cat-fight in Gilmore Girls, “A Messenger, Nothing More,” s5 e2.
I think my theme for this week is: life is getting better.
If you’re a Gilmore Girls fan, you might remember the episode after Rory and Dean had their affair, the one in which Dean’s wife Lindsay discovers Rory’s “heinous letter in Dean’s jacket.” Oy f***in’ vey! See, this is what happens when children grow up only on the outside.
And Rory and Lorelai, walking through the town common, almost run into Lindsay and her mother (whose name apparently is Theresa). At which point Theresa begins tearing into Rory, ignoring Lorelai’s urges to calm down, escalating her tone to the point of “You little monster!” Continue reading “Living a Life of Balanced Thoughts”
Posted in Christianity, Judaism, Personal Improvement, Religion | Tagged black-and-white thinking, Chick-fil-A, Dave Ramsey, debt collectors, depression, Elijah, emotion, Gilmore Girls, nuance, psychology, spirituality, Star Trek
By J. Timothy King on August 7, 2012
The Little One is finishing up Midnight Rain (or at least that’s the plan), this week at camp.
It’s been some time since I read it, but I remember it as incredibly suspenseful and creepy, like the early X-Files episodes (which is a different post). (And I mean “creepy” in a good way.)
Phoebe Rain’s violent ex-husband lies in a coma a thousand miles away. Yet Phoebe knows the voice on the other end of the phone, the voice of that twisted man, who vowed he’d never let her get away. Panicked, she turns to her neighbor, Dr. Alan MacKerrie, who finds the story hard to believe. But now he too is receiving chilling warnings of danger from beyond. Caught between icy terror and mounting passion, is there no escape?
Today’s teaser, from page 147 (randomly selected by Amazon.com) of Midnight Rain: Continue reading “Teaser Tuesdays: Midnight Rain, by Holly Lisle (again)”
Posted in Teaser Tuesdays | Tagged Holly Lisle, Midnight Rain
By J. Timothy King on August 6, 2012
I ran into this on Facebook, or Twitter, or some site or another. It’s been making the rounds, I guess.
“It’s pretty amazing that our society has reached a point where the effort necessary to extract oil from the ground, ship it to a refinery, turn it into plastic, shape it appropriately, truck it to a store, buy it, and bring it home is considered to be less effort than what it takes to just wash the spoon when you’re done with it.”
Of course, with a healthy dose of skepticism, the first thing I did was to research how much was involved in getting a plastic spoon to my dining room table, compared to what was involved in doing the dishes. A plastic spoon costs about 2¢. Washing a steel spoon, even if I paid someone to do it, is still cheaper.
(I’m sure that’s one reason why most people use plastic spoons only on rare occasions. The other reason is that plastic spoons are chintzy, and break in two pieces, and feel funny in your mouth, and generally just kinda suck.)
But 2¢ is still pretty damn amazing. Think about that for a moment, how many steps and how much transportation goes into producing plastic spoon and getting it to your table. And all of that for less than the price of two serious thoughts. Sheesh! It pays for half of itself just by me thinking about it!
Think about the implications! Continue reading “The Amazing Plastic Spoon”
Posted in Inspiration | Tagged life, peace, prosperity |
By J. Timothy King on August 3, 2012
My latest culinary experiment was party a success; the other part, not so much.
The success was the sauce, the result of a spate of online research and some experimentation. The other part: I used great northern beans, which I think were a little old and didn’t tenderize thoroughly. I’ve made baked beans before using great northern beans, successfully. I also thought the beans would pick up some of the color of the sauce, especially from the mollasses, but they didn’t, or at least not as much as I expected. (Actually, they did take on a reddish-brown tinge, especially the second day. But they were just too firm. Ugh.)
So I’m sure I’ll try this again, but using red kidney beans instead, and cooking them in water until they’re thoroughly tender before simmering them with the sauce. (Doh!) Continue reading “Hickory Smoked Barbecued Beans (Recipe)”
Posted in Food, Recipes | Tagged barbecue, beans
